Uncomfortable moment at work

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

Last week I was assigned to another office to help out for a few days a week. I showed up and was let in the building by a woman, probably about my age or a bit younger....I knew her name, we had met the previous week and had some small talk. We were the only two there. As I was putting my food in the fridge, she began telling me about her weekend....a situation where her and her boyfriend got into some road rage incident with a male driver....during the story, she told me she thought the guy was following her at first because she had a "nice rack" and she was cute and he needed to get over it. She went on with the story, talking about the string of expletives she and her boyfriend hurled at the guy, in full detail with no bleeping.

Mind you, this is a very corporate office....it's not an auto body shop or a taxi stand or some place where maybe you'd expect a little loose talk.

Now....I've talked to this woman for a total of five minutes, if that, previous to this. I admit, I was blushing. In a professional situation, working in an office, this was the first time I'd had someone, a woman, I barely knew, talk to me in such a way. I wasn't offended....as much as I just didn't know what to say. I kinda chuckled nervously, said "you gotta be careful out there with people these days" and just went to my desk.

Honestly don't know where I'm going with this, other than to say sometimes when it comes to appropriate talk in the workplace, men can be the ones a bit put off....and the gender wars and shit being tossed around here lately got me thinking about it.

[loli phabay]

1. i liken it to when you first met someone and say they look like a cowboys fan

and when they talk they they have an australian accent, it kinda catches you off guard. I have a friend who is from glasgow in scotland but his parents are korean and its fecking hysterical when he first talks to someone as they are like wtf.

[Warren DeMontague]

2. Its funny how so many people walk though life in a solipsistic bubble.

Im certainly guilty. Often, im sure some jaggof is tailgaiting me because of my darwin fish.

Usually, i think its just that theyre in a hurry. I am just an inconvenient extra in this guy's street racing flick.

So many people feel they! Are! The! Star! Of! The! Movie! And everyone else "doesnt get it", of course... because its ALL 'BOUT THEM and their issues and whatever particular axe they happen to need ground this week.

Everyone loves MEEE, everyone wants MEEEEE, everyone hates MEEEE, and everyone is out to get MEEEEEEE!!!!

ME!!!!

Take a step outside on a clear night. Look at the milky way. Then realize that the milky way, itself, isnt all that significant.

So, hate to break it to folks, but NEITHER ARE YOU. What is truly breathtaking is the pompous self importance some people adopt.

The idea that we are the center of the universe, is an illusion.

[Broderick]

3. One of the reasons I hate small talk

Sometimes people tell me more than I want to know and need to know. It starts at small talk. I have been accused of being aloof or stuck up, but mainly I put off the air of disinterest to avoid hearing what I don't want to hear, especially with those chomping at the bit to tell "someone", "anyone", "something" what they think is so important in their relative lives.

That aside, it sounds as if she has some issues of self infatuation and the behavior afterwards is disturbing, if her story is true at all. I tend to doubt story tellers that want to emphasize on their "assets". Sometimes they want that negative attention, men and women both, so they can act disturbed by the reaction.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. Yeah, I've seen that, too.

I had an opportunity, in the years before I was married, to get involved with a woman- I mean, she was stunning, really, incredibly hot. (shit, am I doing what the subject in the OP's story, did, here? ) ... she was. Gorgeous. There was an immediate attraction, from my end, and as we got to know each other better it was clear she was interested in me, too. She was married but, apparently, in the process of getting divorced (red flags, there, of course) and we were thrown together into some informal situations where when she would get me alone she would, out of the blue, start telling very graphic, very sexual stories about her and her husband, how he wasn't 'doing it' for her, etc.

Made me an bit uncomfortable, although honestly she was hot as hell, and I'm an amiable chap--- so it wasn't like I wasn't going to listen.

When push came to shove, though, I took a pass on getting involved with her; she made a few attempts, called me up late at night, that sort of thing, but I communicated that I wasn't interested. Because, honestly, I had been around the block enough times to recognize some psychological issues. Had I been maybe 5 years younger, my hormones would have got the better of me, and I'd have been, like, "screw it, what the fuck, this person is beautiful, nice, I can get past the slightly off-kilter part".

But looking back, I know I made the right call.

[loli phabay]

6. dude you must remember cute trumps crazy.......

[Warren DeMontague]

7. used to

back in the day.

[loli phabay]

8. lol dude you must be like a hundred years old :)

[Warren DeMontague]

9. Try nine hundred.

[Major Nikon]

15. Only right out of the gate

Crazy always trumps cute in the home stretch. Don't ask me how I know.

[Broderick]

10. I can understand that.

Off kilter is a kind way of putting high maintenance, trouble, and all those things that go along with someone who probably has some inability to be faithful. You can't fix those psychological issues; you can only endure them. Endure them long enough til she meets the next person saying the same things, but it means more from them. Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I could still make the same mistake you describe, and I have made a few in my younger days. But time has taken a toll in most regards and children dominate the day beyond business, not to mention being married all these years and having a good wife who has her own career taking off. I miss those days of loving the "off kilter". Those sickening mealy mouthed butterflies wondering what they were gonna do next and why haven't they called yet. HAHA.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. And I'm not gonna go and bad mouth someone, even anonymously, who was nice, but had obvious issues.

But trouble is right. And I had made similar, ah, choices in the other direction earlier in life. So I took the experience and made what I think was probably the right call, that time.

My life might be real different now had I gone the other way.

[4th law of robotics]

5. That doesn't really seem like appropriate workplace talk

she should be more sensitive to her co-workers.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. but propositioning strangers in an elevator at 4am is just fine?

OK I'm confused by what is considered appropriate and inappropriate here.

[4th law of robotics]

12. It's not that difficult

an extended stream of profanities and sexual references is not appropriate at work.

Implying that you are interested in another adult in public in a non-professional setting is acceptable.

Consider: flip flops. It's ok to wear them in an elevator. Probably not ok to wear them to work.

Also weren't you consistently mis-representing him by claiming he said "hey wanna fuck" rather than asking about coffee?

[Major Nikon]

14. What you're describing doesn't really have a lot to do with gender

...other than often people will just assume that men aren't ever offended by foul language, but many are. I've known plenty of women even in corporate settings that have extremely foul mouths and I've known plenty of men who were offended by foul language coming from anyone. I have a coworker who is a good friend and a lesbian who tells me extremely graphic stories about her sex life. Now there's a woman who can embarrass most men.

[ElboRuum]

16. The lack of professionalism.

Professionalism is what I think you perceive as missing from this exchange. I'm not sure that it was so much a woman saying these things, but rather anyone saying these things in such an environment.

But then, that's the issue. Professionalism, what all good corporate offices aspire to, is a completely unnatural way of carrying oneself and your reaction to it is, oddly, unnatural in the scope of normal human interaction. Of course, it is perfectly reasonable to have this reaction in a professional workplace.

Professionalism is the idea that people, once they walk into a corporate setting, are stripped of their persona and must replace it with a robotic, impersonal bearing. Those of us who are at least somewhat successful at "leaving our non-work stuff" at the door will be taken aback by people who have the unmitigated nerve to personally share their outside of work experiences using their outside of work personas.

I've always found it a bit amusing that we aren't taken aback by the unnatural environment of the corporate workplace while we are in it, rather we are more taken aback by what would be completely normal outside of that environment.